Viva Brother only had 2 options… “get office jobs, do drugs and get fucked every night… or play in a band, do drugs and get fucked every night”. Luckily for us, they chose option 2!
Viva Brother have just finished their mini-tour of Japan, which included headline shows in both Tokyo and Osaka, as well as a slot at this years Summer Sonic. Judging by the reaction they got from the Japanese crowds, and the fact that they absolutely love it here, suggests to us that they’ll be a mainstay in Japan. Let’s hope so anyway, as they’re one of the nicest bands we’ve ever had the pleasure to interview! They’ve also promised to DJ at CONTROL next time they’re here!!
After watching Viva Brother triumphantly storm through their first ever live show in Tokyo, we joined them for a little party in their dressing room and had a good old chat…
So it’s your first time in Japan, please introduce yourselves and tell us a bit about the band…
Lee- Well, we all come from Slough, apart from Josh, who comes from Portsmouth… which is to anyone that doesn’t know, a desolate wasteland to the West of London. And there’s nothing to do other than the factory thing…
Josh- …the urban jungle for the uninspired.
Lee- Nice… very poetic! So yeah, we weren’t prepared to walk around the concrete jungle, so we only had 2 options, which were either; get office jobs, do drugs and get fucked every night, which we tried, and it was alright… or; play in band, do drugs, get fucked every night. We put our heart into music. We were all playing in local bands, and we all sort of found each other through that, realised we were all on the same page, left our old bands, and started a new one. And so Viva Brother was born.
What have you been up to in Tokyo so far?
Josh- Loads and loads of interviews actually.
Sam- Yesterday we did like 7 hours of interviews flat-out!
Lee- But we’ve seen quite a bit of it…
Sam- Yeah, we went round Shibuya last night and went in a bar that was the size of a cupboard, down some little side road.
Lee- We went to Beat Cafe which was cool, but then this other one was even smaller. It was near a massive store, Tokyu Hands maybe, down some alley and there were 10 tiny bars that only seated 7 people! That was really fun. We saw the bright lights, the brothels… didn’t go in though!
Sam- This bar we went in was so small, and like Lee said, it only seated about 7 people, but we had 15 in there… so funny! When you ordered a beer, somebody ran out to the shop and bought it for you! They had no stock!
Josh- They were running down the offy to get tins, haha!
Lee- It was amazing tho. We’ve been looking forward to coming to Japan for months, and we’ve been all over the world, and this has already been one of the best and most exciting places. We feel very honored to be able to come out here as a band.
So you’ve just came off stage from your first ever live show in Japan, how was it?
All- Amazing!
Frank- It was a lot of fun! We didn’t know what to expect really because it was such a big venue.
Lee- We kinda like it that way though, not knowing what to expect before we go on stage…
Josh- Apart from me, I do… I love stats!
Sam- Well we don’t like to walk out in front of the crowd until we go out, its better to just walk out then experience it!
Lee- But to come that far away from home, and see that many people that know your songs is amazing!
And what are the crowds like here, compared to say the UK or America?
Josh- We were told that the crowds here are quite static and appreciative… but I was really surprised because there was a lot of jumping around!
Lee- I think the most lively crowd would be somewhere up North in the UK, like Leeds or Sheffield… they get really loud.
Sam- Newcastle is quite rowdy too!
Lee- Yeah… up North is rowdy. London is really good too, it’s really rowdy for the first 10 rows, then you get all the blackberry-watchers and arm-crossers towards the back. But it’s good to experience different crowds.
Sam- London will always be London, it’s great.
We saw your guerilla gig on a roof in Slough last year…
Lee- Yeah that was the first thing we ever did!
Sam- That was like our introduction to the public.
Lee- Basically, bands were just sticking their songs on a myspace page…
Josh- We saw that dying out, so we were like ‘fuck that’, and tried out a new idea, which was to play in Slough and put it up on the website.
Okay, so back to Japan… What else do you have planned while you are here?
Sam- Well we’ve got Summer Sonic this weekend, we’re going to a party with you guys. I really wanna go to an aquarium too!
Lee- We’ve got a free day and night tomorrow actually. It’s Summer Sonic in Tokyo on Saturday, then we fly to Osaka on Saturday night to play Summer Sonic there on Sunday, then we’ve got a headline gig there on Monday too. What’s it like in Osaka?
Everybody says that the people there are really friendly and funny…
Sam- Everybody in Tokyo is really friendly! How long does it take to get there?
Not long by plane. We usually take the bullet train though, which takes about 3 hours.
Josh- That’s fucking fast innit?
Sam- Goes with the name though doesn’t it… it’s not called the ‘snail train’!
Lee- Or ‘gravy train’.
Sam- Or ‘soul train’.
Are you gonna watch any other bands at Summer Sonic?
Lee- Yeah definitely! We wanna see Suede, but I don’t think we can, they’re on the opposite day to us.
Sam- Horrors, Strokes, ‘Bidet’ Eye.
Lee- Cage The Elephant.
Frank- Maybe even Odd Future, that’ll be interesting to see how they go down here.
Josh- Who are you looking forward to see?
Odd Future, actually. We’ve never seen them live, and it’s their first time in Japan.
Sam- They played after us in America once, I didn’t watch it but Lee did…
Lee- It was nuts! Even behind the stage, I was fucking frightened!
Josh- Yeah after we played, we were in the backstage bit and there was just shitloads of them, just running around and losing it before they’ve even played!
Sam- They’re just like a bunch of out of control kids, but it’s good!
Any plans to go to Sonic Mania tomorrow night?
Lee- What’s that?
MF- It’s like the pre-party for Summer Sonic, at the same place. Primal Scream, Peter Hook…
Lee- Ah cool! Maybe we’ll go then!
Sam- We saw Primal Scream the other day when we played Oxegen, and me and Lee went to watch them. It was unbelieveable!
Lee- They did Screamadelica. I think it was my favorite set of the whole festival. It’s so good!
Sam- I watched them at Glastonbury and stood through the whole thing in the pissing rain, it was fucking wicked… one of the best things of that weekend.
Talking of Glastonbury… how was that? Any mental stories?
Sam- I dunno how much detail I can go into…
Lee- Well we camped, which I don’t think many other bands did, but we really fancied it because we’ve never camped at Glasto before, so we thought we might as well do it properly!
Sam- I’ve got a fairly funny story about Murph from The Wombats, but I won’t go fully into it… I can’t!
Lee- We all love drinking, but Murph really loves it!
Sam- It basically involved him turning up after we hadn’t seen him for hours, with his tongue literally hanging out of his mouth, and he couldn’t even see.
Lee- Haha! Really nice guys The Wombats though!
Haha! I’m going to try get the full story from Murph! Anyway, you seem really big in America…
Lee- It’s getting that way!
Josh- Yeah, we’ve been over there quite a few times already, maybe 3 times. And we’re going over another 3 times before the end of this year.
Lee- We haven’t done full tours, but we have been around a fair few places. We’ve done a lot over there.
And how was Letterman?
Sam- It was cool man, really nice! The studio is freezing cold and you have to get there at like 7am, but it was amazing! We did Kimmel as well last time we went.
Lee- To be booked on those shows is fucking amazing! It’s huge! It’s really overwhelming when you watch it back, it doesn’t look like us.
Have you played in any ‘legendary’ venues in the States?
Sam- Yeah, Mercury Lounge was our first New York show, it’s like where everybody plays their first NY show. It’s like where The Strokes were ‘discovered’. Literally everybody has played there… The Dandy Warhols had their industry show there.
Lee- We did The Satellite in LA too which is quite famous.
Sam- And we’re doing The Troubadour in LA next time! Have you see that movie ‘Yes Man’? It’s the venue where Jim Carrey goes to see that girl sing.
Lee- That’s one for the grandkids that!
For your headline shows in Japan you have support from Ye$man and Taro Kobayashi. Did you have any say in that?
Lee- No, the promoters just told us they were supporting us… but they were actually quite good! I watched them and it was ‘different’, but it was still rock n’ roll.
Sam- Taro is a strong singer, he’s got a really good voice.
So talking about support acts, who would be your ideal tour support?
Lee- The Smiths.
Josh- Suede.
Sam- Jedward… they’re getting massive in the UK!
Frank- We should have some mad DJ support actually! Rusko!
Sam- Thing is though his set would be like… better than us! More mental than ours!
Frank- I want Rusko and Skream & Benga.
Sam- Skrillex, haha! Not really… I don’t really like Skrillex!
Josh- I dunno, do you class Justice as DJs? They could DJ for us!
Lee- Yeah I love Justice, they’re amazing!
Pretty soon to ask, but any plans for your second album?
Sam- We’ve been thinking about it…
Lee- We’re working on songs already, experimenting. I think its gonna be a bit dirtier…
Josh- We wanna self produce it. With our first album, it starts off really ‘poppy’ with ‘New Years Day’ and stuff, but it ends with ‘False Alarm’ and ‘Time Machine’, which are a bit darker, and I think thats kind of the direction we wanna go…
Sam- ‘Time Machine’ is kind of an indication of the direction we’re going.
Do you ever play covers?
Lee- Not really, we were working on one, weren’t we?
Josh- Yeah, we did a Radio One session a while ago and we did the Men Behaving Badly theme tune!
Lee- We also did a cover of a Katy B song for The Sun, but that was just a bit of fun. And I think that’s as far as we’ll go.
Sam- We toyed with the idea of playing that Flagpole Sitta song as well didn’t we?
Josh- Yeah, the Peep Show theme tune!
Did you guys have any second thoughts about coming to Japan since the earthquake in March? A lot of bands cancelled or postponed soon after it.
Sam- Never!
Frank- No, it didnt even occur to us to cancel.
Lee- I think it’d be unfair, you know, especially as there’s no reason to stay away. People still live here, so everyone has gotta try to help rebuild it.
Josh- The coverage back home was intense! But they always try to make a bigger deal out of news from outside the UK, rather than our own news. Like in America when we were there, there was more coverage of the Royal Wedding than there was in the UK. Basically if there’s news elsewhere, the media make a bigger deal out of it than the media in the actual country where the news is from, and tend to exaggerate it.
Lee- So you were here for the earthquake, how was it?
Down here in Tokyo we were okay, nothing compared to the damage further North.
Lee- It must’ve been traumatic!
It was scary, but thanks for coming and not canceling…
Frank- Mate, it never even crossed our mind, even if we were due to come in March I still think we’d have come.
Sam- The thing is, even if it hadn’t have happened, there’s still a chance it could happen while you’re there. It’s not something you can predict, so I don’t see the logic in canceling.
Change of subject now… where do you get all your sunglasses?!
Lee- Haha! Ray Ban very kindly gave us a few pairs.
Sam- I usually just buy funny ones from down Brick Lane market.
Lee- Yeah, we sometimes just buy cheap ones!
Josh- That’s where we get all of our shirts from as well!
Any messages for your Japanese fans?
All- Thanks!
Lee- Yeah! The album went in at number 2 on the alternative charts here, and number 15 or something on the international charts, so yeah… It means the world to us, so thanks so much to everyone that’s bought it! And we’ll be coming back loads, so you won’t be able to get rid of us!
Sam- Maybe we should just move here!
We think you should! Thanks a lot Viva Brother… now lets get to that party! Oi oi!
Buy Viva Brother’s debut album ‘Famous First Words’ here. Check out their homepage here.
Also check out our Tokyoheads with Viva Brother coming very soon…
Feature Photo credits: Pennie Smith
Other Photos: Jacob Hodgkinson
